Page 63 of Pour Decisions
Nana pulls me in for a hug next, letting Bubba barge through next to us. We get set up in the kitchen, Nana at her small table with Coco, and Katrina sitting across from her. Bubba lays right in the way until I scoot him over into the doorway to the living room. I pour us all tea and get started on dinner.
“I didn’t plan to set y’all up,” Nana says, sipping her iced tea. “You know that, right? Delia’s going to be fuming.”
I snort and fill up a pot of water. Despite Mom’s efforts, her attempts at matchmaking haven’t worked for anyone yet.
“But did you recognize Kat?” I ask Nana. “I showed you her picture back then.”
“I was so stressed out about my damn hip back then that I hardly remember anything.” Nana sighs. “Except for all those episodes of Maury I ended up watching.”
“All episodes of Maury are basically the same,” I point out. Some days when I was sick as a kid, I stayed with Nana and watched it, despite it being wildly inappropriate in retrospect.
Nana waves me off. “Anyway, no, I didn’t know y’all already knew each other. I just felt that you two needed something to shake things up. So I just played Mother Fate.”
“Yeah.” Katrina gives me a warm smile. “God knows neither of us would have tried to go to the thing you told us to go to, much less together at that point.”
“Oh, that thing?” Nana says. “Yeah, I saw it and thought it was a wild idea for Jepsen’s little community center. Of course it was Hugh the Cashew who thought of it.”
“Hugh the Cashew?” Katrina snort-laughs into her tea. “Because he’s a nut?”
“Yep.”
Both Katrina and Nana cackle like old friends.
“Cashews are technically drupes, not nuts,” I say, even though the moment the words are out of my mouth, I know they’re going to roast me for it.
But I kind of like it when they do.
“Booo, don’t suck the fun out of it,” Katrina says, her tone light. “Plus Hugh the Almond doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“Almonds aren’t nuts either, technically,” I say.
“Then what is a nut?” Katrina asks with a sigh.
“Hazelnuts. Acorns.” I shrug.
“Nuts aside, how did you like the event?” Nana asks. “What’d you make?”
We tell her about our sculpture misadventures, and Nana laughs her ass off when we show her the terrible finished products that Katrina brought home after Hugh fired them in the kiln. I finish up the pasta and the conversation flows easily.
It’s like Katrina is meant to be here, like we didn’t have the past ten years apart. Yeah, we look different than we did back then, but besides that? The ease I’ve never felt with anyone else is back.
After we eat dinner, Kat pops the cookies into the oven and we eat them with hot tea. Kat does the dishes even though Nana insists that she’s got it. It’s long gotten dark, and soon I’m yawning. I’m usually winding down for bed by now. But both Kat and Nana look wide awake. Kat I’m less surprised by—it seems like she goes from regular relaxing to passed out asleep in seconds. But Nana has always been early to bed.
“You aren’t tired, Nana?” I ask.
“Nope.” She grins. “It’s these little gummy things Ash gave me. They knock me out deep so I get better rest, then I don’t need to go to bed so early. Love them.”
Kat and I exchange a glance. Ash didn’t give our grandma edibles, did he?
Nana starts talking about how getting more sleep gives her more energy to garden and I open up my text to Ash. The last text we exchanged was him saying ‘fuck you’ without any context I can remember. As was the text before that, from me.
Me: Did you give Nana edibles?
Reply bubbles pop up immediately.
Ash:
Then, the bubbles disappear.
